


For the Longest Time

by penny_arcade



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern: Still Have Powers, F/M, Family reunited, Finn is amazing and supportive because we all know he is, Rey is reunited with her family because she deserves that, not a slow burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-26 11:11:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13856598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penny_arcade/pseuds/penny_arcade
Summary: Rey had spent her whole life thinking her parents had sold her off to feed a habit so naturally her life is spun out a bit when she learns that that was not the case.Thankfully she has met someone who can help her untangle everything.This is a tale of kidnapping, siblings, parents, love, the Force, and a whole mess of emotions.





	1. Talking in Your Sleep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, thanks for clicking! I hope you enjoy it. This is my first fic in a long, long time and I should really be writing the thesis chapter that I've been working on for ages or prepping for my meetings next week but instead... I've done this.
> 
> Anyway-
> 
> In this chapter: a brief introduction to Rey.

_“Do it, young Kylo,” the raspy voice said from somewhere to her right. The floor was hard beneath her, wet with the blood spilling from her various wounds. “Kill her. Show her what happens when you betray the Order and end her treacherous life.”_

__

__

_She heard a loud clang echo across the room, a lightsaber dropping to the floor near her. “No,” Kylo Ren said._

_“A disappointment as always, Ren.” The voice was biting, spitting, dripping venom with its words. “Never mind, I will do it myself.” He summoned his lightsaber from beside his gaudy, unnecessary throne and ignited it._

_“I’m going to enjoy this.” He pressed the tip against her abdomen, making her scream in pain as it burned her skin. He did it again to her chest, just above her right breast._

_He was taking his time, teasing her, making her wish she were dead before he killed her. She had one chance, so she quickly summoned Kylo’s lightsaber into her hand and thrusted it up into Snoke’s chest as he bent to deal another blow, igniting it halfway through. His eyes stared into hers in shock, in slight awe at what she had done, then he collapsed to the floor- dead._

Rey woke up with a jolt, sweat clinging to her body. She lifted a hand to her face, covering her eyes and her heart returned to its normal pace. She kicked the sheets off her body and slowly got up, and glanced at the alarm clock as she made her way to the bathroom. It was still early- too early, really, but she knew there would be no going back to sleep.

It had been a while since she had last woken up like this, since she had last had that nightmare. A good few weeks, by her estimation. Maybe even a month? 

She splashed cold water on her face and braced herself on the sink. She didn’t regret what she did- that wasn’t what the nightmares were about. She regretted not doing it sooner, she regretted being so weak that he could tear apart her mind, and she regretted the fact that he eyes still haunted her. Her nightmares were there to remind her that everything he did before she killed him was her fault- her fault for not stopping him before that.

She wished he would just leave her alone after his death but he was a constant, it seemed. Ben had the same problem; it was like he was still there, whispering in their ears. 

Her self-doubt had his voice.

*****

She went downstairs and across the driveway to the garage and unlocked its backdoor. Once the light was turned on, she went over to the old silver car in one of the bays and popped its hood. It had been a while since she had last worked on it, but her boss Han had been fiddling with the engine for months trying to get it to go over 150mph without having to replace the whole thing.

Wouldn’t hurt to take a look, right? She was the one who found the damn thing after it was stolen a decade earlier. It had taken her a great deal of digging but she eventually found it in the junk yard belonging to a couple of criminals who called themselves the Irving Boys. She took a little time off from the garage, went to New Jersey for a couple of weeks and gained the Irvings’ trust, only to steal the car from right under his nose. She could have just snuck in and hotwired it in the dead of night, but she liked the idea making a game out of it. Plus, it gave her a chance to race some of their cars- something the Organa-Solo family had been dead set against.

But that was a year ago and the need to drive a car that could handle that speed was sneaking up on her again.

Han was very particular about that car- the Millennium Falcon, he called it- and didn’t let any of the mechanics near it except Rey. She knew that privilege could be revoked at a second’s notice, so she had never done the amount of tinkering she really wanted to, and boy did she want to. She wanted to take the whole thing apart and study its pieces. She wanted to clean each and every piece and put it back together.

So, this morning, she did.

Or at least to a small degree.

She took her time and cleaned the parts she could reach and found something that shouldn’t be there. She had known the Irving Boys installed a rudimental fuel pump that required the line to be primed before every use, but she wasn’t aware of this new little gadget by the compressor. That could solve all their problems, if her thinking was correct.

Han Solo walked through the back door before she could test her theory. “Couldn’t sleep?” He asked by way of greeting.

“Same old, same old,” she replied, and wiped her hands on a rag that hung from her hip. “I think I found your problem.”

Han’s eyes lit up. “Really? What?”

She closed the hood of the car and leaned against it. “Let me be the one to test the idea and I’ll tell you,” she said with a smile.

Han snorted. “No way in hell, kid. Leia would skin my hide just for considering it.”

“Guess you’ll just have to figure it out yourself then, old man.” Han gave a small laugh and they both went about the familiar process of opening the building for business.

After him and his wife Leia had taken her in, Han’s Garage had become her ultimate safe place. It was where she was able to think through her problems while elbow deep in some car’s undercarriage, or not think at all as she switched out someone’s old muffler for a new one.

She always had a gift when it came to machines. It wasn’t just cars or motorcycles but anything with an engine or a motherboard. She could fix your computer or your airplane (as her roommate Poe could attest, having had her help fix both things on a regular basis). She just understood machines in a way she never fully understood people.

Kaydel Connix, her other roommate, came into the garage and set up their playlist for the day. Once the sound of 90’s pop came through the speakers (which Kaydel put on purely to annoy Han) and their first customer of the day rolled up, they got to work.

A few miles away, Finn Storm walked into Resistance Security with a coffee and a bagel, ready for another day of work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Please let me know what you think. I have the next chapter written and Ill post it as soon as chapter 3 is written (and so on and so forth). I'd like to keep one chapter ahead of posting for my own sake and yours. I've been known to be scatter brained so hopefully that will help.
> 
> I promise Finn will be in it more but this is a Rey-centric fic so he's not really there for more than a sentence or two until they meet (but it's not a slow burn, so don't worry- it will happen soon).


	2. Don't Stop Believin'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We stop following Rey for a quick sec to talk about... Rey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't bother with the slow setup, I wanted to get right into it. So here you go!

Leia felt the tension of a long day in her shoulders and it wasn’t even two yet. She had four meetings (all of which did not go well), three coffees, and two bill proposals waiting for her on her desk, both of which would have to wait until after her next meeting, which she was running late for. She hurried down the hall and paused before she got to her office door, not wanted to look as stressed as she really was. That was the key to the political game: never let them see you sweat.

She entered her office’s reception room and gave a smile to her secretary, who nodded in return. Her colleague, Senator Thomas Fitzpatrick, was seated at a chair by the desk, scrolling through his phone. “Tom,” she said and his head jerked up. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“Don’t worry about it, it’s a busy week for all of us.” He stood up and grasped her hand in greeting. “I’m just glad we finally have a chance to work together on a bill after all these years fighting across the aisle.”

Leia laughed and led him towards to door in the back. “I think it’s high time we have a bipartisan effort going to reduce the sale of high powered blasters.” They entered her office and she closed the door behind them, extending an arm towards one of the seats in front of her desk. “Please, have a seat.”

He strode across the room and froze halfway through sitting down, eyes fixated on a photograph of a young woman with shoulder length brown hair, warm hazel eyes, and a glowing smile. Leia, not being oblivious, noticed right away. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“That photograph,” he said, sitting all the way down but reaching out his hand in a silent demand. “The one of the girl.” 

Leia frowned but handed it to him. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Senator.”

“I think I have,” his voice no more than a whisper and his eyes took in every aspect of the photograph. “She looks just like my daughter.” He set the photograph down on the desk and reached into his pocket for his wallet. “All I’ve got is this old mugshot but I swear, they look exactly alike.”

“Why, exactly, do you have a mug shot of your daughter in your wallet?” Leia asked, taking the photograph Tom offered her. It certainly looked like the girl in her photograph, albeit slightly younger than when they first met.

“It’s the only photograph we have of her after she turned five,” Tom said in a sad, low voice. “She was kidnapped a few days after her birthday. I was a clerk for one of the Supreme Court judges and this group thought they could get me to influence an outcome if they took her. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have that kind of power, that I couldn’t do what they asked. When I couldn’t deliver, they promised we’d never see her again.” Tom sighed and ran a tired hand over his face. “We hired a private investigator about six years ago and he was able to trace that the people who took her were connected with this gang in London and that a couple of them ended up dead in a motel with a girl about five years old as the only witness. She said her name was Rey but that’s all they got out of her and she went into the foster care system. So, the P.I. was able to trace her up to her arrest when she was sixteen for stealing a car but she disappeared after that. No record of her anywhere. We told him to stop looking after a year, we figured it was bad news and just couldn’t deal with the heartbreak.”

Tom leaned forward, putting his elbows on her desk and gave her an imploring, desperate look. “But then you have a picture of her right here in your office. You can’t deny they are the same girl, look at the scar on her right cheek, it’s identical.”

“I don’t have to look at the scar, Tom.” She got up from her desk and went over to the cabinet by the door, pulling an expensive bottle of whiskey from its cupboard. She poured two glasses and handed one to the man, who thanked her with a nod. “She told me about getting arrested for joyriding in her foster dad’s car when she was a kid,” Tom’s breath hitched in his chest. “And about the unfortunate circumstances around how she ended up in foster care to begin with, although the version she was told was that her parents probably used her as drug money, giving her to the Teedos- that’s the gang from the motel- in exchange for a few dime bags.”

“How do you know all this?” Tom asked, a begging quality to his voice. “How do you know her? How did she end up in the States?”

Leia sighed. “She came to us through the system, in a roundabout way.” She paused, swirling the amber liquid in her glass. “We leaned on the police commissioner and got her out of a bad situation.”

“Police commissioner?” Tom asked. “She was arrested again or something?” Leia nodded. “What for?”

“Murder,” she said, gravely. Tom choked on his drink; he was expecting maybe car theft again, not murder. Leia sighed again and continued. “It’s not safe out there for Force users, you know that.”

“She can use the Force?” he asked.

Leia nodded again. “She’s extremely powerful, my brother says he’s never seen anyone like her. Which is probably why Snoke was so enamored by her. He found her when she was just fifteen, floating around from bad foster home to bad foster home. He tempted her with promises of power and a way out of her situation. She ran away from her foster parents a couple weeks after being released from juvie, not that they noticed, and he brought her to America. Started training her in the Force, planting dark thoughts in her head, messing with her dreams; he was constantly forcing his way into her mind, turning her to the Dark Side.” Leia paused to take a sip from the glass in her hand. Tom looked pained but didn’t speak. “That’s how she met my son, Ben. Or should I say Kylo Ren; the man she met wasn’t my son at that point, he was darker. Snoke got into his head as well, you see. Turned him away from my brother’s teachings. Ben was always conflicted, always troubled so he was easy to turn, but Rey? Her soul always belonged to the Light- this was just a temporary detour.”

Leia got up and started pacing slightly, something she hated to do but couldn’t help when she was stressed. “She soon realised what Snoke was, what he was doing. He wanted to take over; he wanted all the ‘normal’ people to bow down to those who could use the Force. Bow down to his First Order bullshit. So, she started to turn my son back to the Light, slowly but surely. She was about to start turning others but Snoke caught on. He… wasn’t kind.” 

Leia ran a hand through her hair. “I won’t mince words, Tom. I won’t do that to you.” Tom nodded for her to continue, swallowing hard. “He beat her to a bloody pulp. Tortured her, tore through her mind. It still gives her nightmares. Ben was watching the whole time, Snoke told him to kill her but he wouldn’t. Or couldn’t. Either way, he didn’t and that forced Snoke to try but she was quicker; she summoned Ben’s lightsaber and stabbed Snoke through the heart with it.”

Tom was pale- no, he was beyond pale at this point. He wanted to hear the rest but also didn’t; he wasn’t sure he could take it. Leia continued anyway. “Her and Ben had to fight their way out of the building; Snoke’s men weren’t too keen on letting them escape. Someone must have called the police because they had surrounded the building by the time they got to the front door. They were both arrested but we were able to get them released before being processed. After hearing what Rey did for our son- our family- we couldn’t just leave her there to face life in prison or even the death penalty if they tried her as an adult. She brought our son back, she turned Kylo Ren back into Ben Solo.

“So, we told the commissioner, an old friend of ours, that we would take her in- help her. My brother used to teach Jedis, back when they were a thing, when they used to work with law enforcement, so we promised to keep her on the straight and narrow, keep her in the Light. I think the commissioner took pity on her- she was only seventeen and with what Snoke had done to her… He put it down as self-defense and let her go. She’s been part of the family ever since; she’s practically a savant when it comes to mechanics so she works at Han’s garage, moved to the apartment over the office not long after she turned twenty but she’s still over all the time for dinner and family movie nights.” 

Leia stopped pacing and turned so she was completely facing her colleague. “She is an extraordinary woman, Tom. She still struggles with the Dark, sometimes, but she’s never strayed.” Tom is silent for a long time, absorbing everything he just heard. “I know this is a lot to take in, I understand if you want your wife need some time to process and discuss everything. I can set up a meeting with Rey once you’re all ready,” she offered, kindly.

“Yes,” he muttered. “Yes, as soon as possible. We’ve waited eighteen years to find out what happened to her, I don’t want to wait any longer.” Leia nodded.

“Of course, why don’t you go talk to your family and I’ll talk to Rey and call you tomorrow to figure out a time and place to meet.”

“Are…are you sure she will meet with us?” His voice was small, voicing a doubt he didn’t know he had.

“She thinks she was abandoned, Tom. Once she finds out that isn’t true she will need some time to readjust but I know she will want to meet you.”

*****

“How Patty Hearst,” was the first thing anyone said after Tom told them about his… eventful meeting with Leia. He had called all of his children and told them there was to be a mandatory family meeting as soon as possible. Andy, the youngest at twenty, was already home, given the fact that she lived there while going to the local university. Jason, the oldest at thirty, was the first to arrive after he finished work. He had to break off date night with his wife (who was understandably disappointed- it was hard to arrange what they called “together time” while raising a rowdy five-year-old girl) so his grumbles about having to wait for Jane were, as he thought at the time, warranted. Jane, the one of the middle of what used to be four children at the nice age of twenty-six, came an hour later.

Tom had already told his wife, who promptly broke down into tears and hadn’t been fully able to stop since. Rachel was beaming through her watery eyes and red, puffy face, responding to every question about her appearance with a “we’ll tell you when everyone’s here.”

“Andy, seriously,” Rachel admonished.

“What, it’s true,” Andy muttered. “Kidnapped, joined weird cult slash terrorist group, committed crimes, changed her ways- it fits.”

“Unfortunate likenesses aside,” Jane cut in. “How can you be sure this girl is really our Rey?”

“Life story matches up and her mugshot is almost identical to the girl in the photo in Senator Organa’s office. See, she gave me some more, just what she had on her but you can tell!” Tom set the few photos Leia was able to give him on such short notice. One was a Solo-Organa family photo, Rey giving a weak smile from the front; Leia mentioned it was towards the beginning of the family taking her in and Rey wasn’t sure where she fit in. Another photograph was of Rey and Han leaning on an old car; they were covered in grease but their smiles were huge. They had just finished building it from scratch- something that had taken them the better part of two years. One was a recent photograph, professionally taken, Rey all smiles with her eyes shining brightly. Leia said she had brought it in the other day to replace the one he had seen on the desk but had yet to get around to it.

The siblings all picked up the photographs and passed them to each other in turn. “She looks just like mom in this one,” Jason whispered in awe, staring at the professional photograph. Andy nodded, taking out her phone.

“Is her last name still Jackson?” She asked, pulling up the Facebook app and going to the search bar. When her father confirmed that Rey had kept the last name given to her in the British foster system- the one that the private investigator uncovered- she typed it in and scrolled through a few results until she came to the profile of Rey Jackson, employed at Han’s Garage. The profile picture matched the woman in the photos on the coffee table, so she clicked through a few more. There was definitely a great deal of similarities between her and their Rey, there was no denying that.

She scrolled down, finding a photo that Rey was tagged in, posted by a Poe Dameron. In it, Rey was frowning while sitting at a bar next to a man with dark, curly hair and a pretty impressive leather jacket. “#reyofsunshine at it again” the caption said. She clicked on the hashtag and was brought to a page full of photographs of a grumpy- or pretending to be grumpy, as she could tell in some- Rey with the same hashtag.

Her and her siblings spent the rest of the night scrolling through Rey’s profile, trying to learn all they could about her and if there was any way this couldn’t be their sister.

*****

“Wait- what?” Rey had been silent for a good five minutes after Leia finished her story before finding her voice. “I- _what?_ ”

“I know this is a lot to take in,” Leia said, reaching across the kitchen table to grab her surrogate daughter’s hand. Leia had called her as soon as Tom had left her office, saying something came up at work and she wanted Rey’s take on it. She then called Han and had him meet her at home, telling him everything. When Rey got there a couple hours later, after closing up the garage and all but emptying their snack cupboard onto the table and digging in, Leia told her what had happened, a firm grasp on Han’s hand under the table for support. “But they want to meet you, Rey. Your family wants to meet you.”

“I…” Rey’s face was a mask, as it always was in difficult situations. She had a tendency of shutting down, something Han and Leia tried to help through therapy and support but she never fully, completely broke the habit. “I need… time.”

“Of course, kid,” Han spoke up for the first time. “We won’t pretend to know what you’re going through, but we’re here for you. Always.”

After a bout of silence, Rey left and went back to her apartment above the garage. Poe and Kaydel were there, cuddling on the couch with their dog BB8 and watching the latest episode of Scandal. They turned to her once she slammed the front door closed, and eyed her with confusion.

“We’re going out,” she announced and went into her room to change.

“Ooookay?” Kaydel replied. “Anywhere in particular?”

“Paige’s party is tonight, right?” Rey pulled out her long-sleeved sequin crop top and grey skirt and laid them on her bed. “I don’t care where we go, I just need to go out.”

“Anything you want to talk about?” Poe asked.

“Nope!” Rey shouted back, leaving her room and heading towards the bathroom. The couple sighed and got up, knowing their date night in had turned into a what would most likely be a wild night out.

Across town, Finn arrived at the party of his old friend from high school, ready for a night of drinking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got chapter three written sooner than expected; we've been snowed in the last four days and I've gone a little crazy just sitting around.
> 
> Anyway, harass me on tumblr: thisisnotatrashcan


End file.
